Connelly: The 100 best games of the 2022 college football season

Bill Connelly is a staff writer for ESPN.com.

The 2022 college football season was good. Really good. It gave us shocking early upsets and wild Hail Mary passes at the start and the best pair of CFP semifinals we’ve seen to date at the end. The in-between: also pretty good. Don’t believe me? Check out the list below.

As always, let’s commemorate the season with a look back at the 100 best games of the season.

100. Pitt 38, West Virginia 31 (Sept. 1)

99. Pitt 37, UCLA 35 (Dec. 30)

Pat Narduzzi’s 9-4 season at Pitt began and ended with wild wins. In the opener, the Panthers’ first Backyard Brawl against West Virginia since 2011 saw seven lead changes and a pair of 14-0 runs in the fourth quarter. The visiting Mountaineers went from down 24-17 to up 31-24 late, but Israel Abanikanda’s 24-yard touchdown with 3:41 left tied the score, and M.J. Devonshire’s 56-yard pick-six 43 seconds later gave the Panthers the eventual win.

Picks played a heavy role in the season-ending Sun Bowl too. UCLA used a 52-yard pick-six to go up 28-14 in the third quarter, but Pitt picked off Bruins quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson three times and scored 16 points in the fourth quarter. UCLA took a 35-34 lead with just 34 seconds left, but two big pass completions by Nick Patti got the Panthers into field goal range, and Ben Sauls banged in a 47-yarder with four seconds left.

98. James Madison 32, Appalachian State 28 (Sept. 24)

From the very start of the season, FBS newcomer James Madison signaled that it was ready for the jump. The Dukes won their first two games of the season by a combined 107-14, and in Week 4 they spotted host App State a 28-3 lead and somehow won anyway. JMU scored the final 29 points of the game, clamping down on the Mountaineers’ defense, scoring twice in 52 seconds early in the fourth quarter and seeing out a message win.

97. Penn State 35, Purdue 31 (Sept. 1)

One of the first awesome games of the season. Penn State would eventually go 11-2 with a top-10 finish in 2022, but the Nittany Lions could have easily started 0-1. Purdue took the lead twice in the final 17 minutes, but Sean Clifford threw fourth-quarter touchdown passes to Keandre Lambert-Smith and Keyvone Lee — sandwiching a long Chris Jefferson pick-six — and PSU shut out the Boilermakers in four fourth-quarter drives.

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